Operationalizing BI
Employees in finance, sales, marketing, and customer support are the leading users of business intelligence applications, according to a new study by Ventana Research. The study suggests that customer-focused initiatives and operations are a key driver of today's analytical investments. 
The research, sponsored by CMP Publications and Siebel Systems, was based on the responses of 437 executives -- 73% of whom were in IT organizations while 27% had line-of-business roles. "The main features respondents look for in BI solutions are simplified integration of data and metadata across multiple BI applications and central management of metadata," states Eric Rogge is VP and research director at Ventana Research in Optimize Magazine. "Stovepiped BI applications aren't acceptable. Companies stitch various BI applications together to weave larger information fabrics, creating a seamless, consistent view of the customer and other key business entities."
Further, he pointed to a growing interest in Operational BI. " It's not designed to support strategic planning, but to gather and analyze operational BI and deliver this actionable information to front-line workers," he explains. "Operational BI enhances corporate performance by improving day-to-day, minute-by-minute decision making and the performance of critical business processes."
The trouble is that that too many Operational BI applications are "addressed with a task-specific application to support a defined set of decisions. Unlike general-purpose BI tools used by business analysts, these point-solutions historically were created one at a time by in-house development teams, which often can't keep up with the organization's burgeoning need for information."
The demand is attracting vendors, of course. They promise to put together more comprehensive packaged applications -- some of which are already being deployed. Unfortunately, not everyone's happy with their deployment experiences. "Areas for improvement cited by study participants include shorter time to deploy, more interactivity, faster query performance, better data integration from multiple sources, and more complete customer views," noted Rogge. "Deployment times varied: About half of the respondents say it took longer than a year to deploy vendor-developed BI applications. A third said the deployments were available in less than one year."